


All the Little Cuts

by cashewdani



Series: The Archipelago of Kisses [2]
Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-11
Updated: 2008-06-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:50:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He takes her on walks of Brooklyn and tries not to hold her hand.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Little Cuts

Once Dan’s broken up with Serena, it’s almost like he can’t remember what he was so upset about. Dan knows in the past he’s lied to her, like when Vanessa first came back to town, or when he said he didn’t want to talk about his mom. How somehow she still trusted him.

He misses her and it’s horrible.

Dan starts hanging around Vanessa more than he has since right before she moved way. He constantly focuses in on how he used to love her and now it doesn’t mean much of anything, trying to take some comfort in that. 

Until the one night at her sister’s show, where she leans into him, saying it’s funny how things work out sometimes. When she kisses him, she tastes like her last toke. 

He tells her he’s not ready, because he thinks it will be nicer than the truth, but she calls him a bitch and lets him know he should go fuck himself.

\---

With Vanessa avoiding him, and him avoiding Serena, Dan realizes how completely empty his social life is. He even tries getting Jenny to hang out with him, but she’s wound up in the world of Eleanor Waldorf and enjoying the fact that their father is somewhere on a bus miles away.

He goes to the library a lot, takes out books he’s read before, and wonders if he’ll ever write a great American novel.

The loft is quiet all day and Dan can’t imagine the next two months being like this.

\---

When his caller ID says Waldorf, he answers with no hesitation. He’s actually been that bored recently.

She doesn’t sound like herself as she says, “Humphrey, remind me that Brooklyn is shittier than I feel right now.” Kind of shaky and unsure, and even though he’s getting sick of the borough, he knows Brooklyn is definitely in better shape than she is right now.

Dan starts talking about the used bookstore he went to, and this poem by Larry Levis he found that he can’t get out of his head. He somehow stops himself from quoting his favorite line.

He only gets off the phone with her when she says they’re pulling up outside her father’s house. After hearing the thanks, which seemed like it held a hint of a smile, the line goes dead. He realizes, later on, that in his desire for human interaction, he’d never even asked why she was calling him.

\---

Dan finds himself thinking more about Blair in the following days than about either Serena or Vanessa. Blair has always been there, on the edge of his relationship with Serena, and he honestly thought she would fade into oblivion with all the other things connected to his girlfriend.

And even though Blair’s been there all along, he still can’t say that he fully understands her. She’s simultaneously strong and weak. Intimidating, but for reasons he can’t fathom.

Serena’s told him stories about Blair. About her eating disorder, and Nate’s ambivalence and how Chuck somehow can be a human when he’s around her. All of these things that seemed unable to fit the ideas he’d carried around long before their paths ever really crossed.

He remembers that conversation with her in the hallway, and saying things to her that he had never really planned to say to anyone, forget about Blair Waldorf. And even though that’s a huge thing, he can’t help but focus every time he thinks about it, on the way her legs were posed; in an arrangement that looked too broken and vulnerable for Blair to ever let anyone see.

He thinks about Blair’s legs and her rawness and worries about her all alone across the ocean.

\--- 

It makes him feel a little better when one morning there’s an e-mail from her waiting in his inbox. It’s only a few lines, and asks him if he’d prefer to have a croissant or fresh fruit for breakfast. How she’s probably going to have the croissant since her mom is nowhere around to find out.

He hits reply and tells her he hope she did, because that’s what he’d choose as well. And with that discussion of breakfast options, he finds himself having back and forth conversations with Blair Waldorf over the internet. Dan looks forward to hearing about the weather there, and what she thinks he’d like doing. She throws in random sayings in French, and there’s something about it that makes her seem simply intelligent and not pretentious. And, he will admit, it’s comforting knowing there’s someone just as bored as he is, sitting on their own computer and hitting “check mail” every few minutes, hoping something shows up.

He’s never been much of anywhere, with the exception of Montreal once when he was four, and he doesn’t really remember much of that trip other than getting really sick on the plane. But, he starts thinking about what France would be like. If he’d actually enjoy spending an entire afternoon people watching while drinking café au lait on wicker chairs.

Eventually though, after the fourth or fifth e-mail that starts off with something along the lines of I don’t know how much longer I can take this, he asks her why she doesn’t just come home, and puts aside the idea of exploring Paris with her.

They have coffee in New York.

\---

Dan ends up in Blockbuster asking if they have a copy of _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ and feeling a little weird doing it. He’s never seen the movie, although he knows it’s apparently Blair’s favorite. After he’s paid, he realizes this probably means she already owns a copy and he could have saved himself the embarrassment.

Riding in the elevator up to her house, that uneasiness still hasn’t entirely dissipated. Talking through a computer is one thing, but this is in person and at her house and he becomes very aware of the fact that he’s showing up completely unannounced.

Dorota is waiting for him when the doors open, and announces, “Mr. Dan for you, Miss Blair.” He stands there, a pizza box hot on his palm, the Blockbuster bag dangling from his other hand, and wonders if anyone else in the history of the apartment has shown up like this.

But, Blair smiles when he shows her the DVD box and tells her, “Serena told me it was one of your favorites.” She takes him to her bedroom, talking a mile a minute about how her mother’s using the screening room, and does he want a drink and listing reasons that Audrey Hepburn is not only her favorite actresses, but one of her role models.

Dan figures it’s because she hasn’t had anyone to talk to recently, and lets her ramble, trying not to interrupt or smirk. She hands him a martini he didn’t ask for, and he watches her down hers by the time the movie is at the first party scene. Blair glances over at his still full glass, and takes it off the bedside table.

He doesn’t really get why anyone likes, let alone loves, this movie. Mickey Rooney could not be anymore racist if he tried, and Dan’s starting to think that either one or both of the main characters are hookers of some sort. But then, Hepburn is out on her balcony, strumming a guitar, and Dan hears Blair make this sad sigh as if it means something.

He moves his hand over, lying his little finger on top of hers. It seems like too big and too small a gesture simultaneously, and he won’t let himself look at her.

When the movie is over, the menu screen playing on repeat in the background, Blair asks him if he can stay a little longer. She takes a deep breath, and tells him that Chuck was supposed to take her to Tuscany. That he said he loved her and she believed it, and how she ended up flying there with one of his father’s cronies only for him to show up two days late to say he slept with someone else.

Dan watches her refusing to get as upset about this as he knows she wants to be. He thinks of all the times he’s wanted to punch Chuck Bass, and all the times he has, and how this would certainly be another one to add to the list. He can’t stop himself from cursing and telling Blair Chuck’s a completely blind piece of shit.

While he rants, he watches Blair relax, and wonders how so many guys could have wanted to hurt her.

\---

Dan starts inviting Blair out to do all the things he had planned on doing by himself that summer. It starts out as something built a little on pity and a little on kinship, but, he finds himself enjoying the time she agrees to spend with him.

After seeing the prairie dogs at the zoo and three different bands that are up and coming, he starts to feel a little guilty. He knows Blair wouldn’t be doing any of this stuff unless he was calling her about it. How she thinks Brooklyn is mostly disgusting and beneath her. 

He offers to go shopping with her, and to the random restaurants and clubs Jenny tells him are trendy, but she shrugs and keeps saying she’s not interested.

One night, while they’re watching _The Royal Tenenbaums_ , he notices her padding around the loft barefoot, and it does something weird to his chest. She looks like she fits there, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and knowing exactly where the tortilla chips are in the cabinet. He watches her go up on tiptoe to reach them on the shelf.

That night, Dan wonders if he’s turning Blair Waldorf into someone else and about how he kind of wanted to touch the arch of her foot when she came to sit back down.

His lungs tighten up in the same way when he catches her behind him in line at _The Gap_ holding a pale blue t-shirt, a pair of black plastic flip flops dangling from her fingers. She gives him a look, like she’s daring him to say something about it, and Dan doesn’t open his mouth at all.

His bedroom ends up holding generic t-shirts and sandals and even a pair of yoga pants that he never actually sees her wear. It’s absurd if he thinks about it too much, the fact that they’re not even dating and she has a drawer at his place. How sometimes his sheets smell kind of like her, like pears. But, mostly it freaks him out when he catches her watching him when she doesn’t think he’s paying attention.

Dan knows that look. And he doesn’t want to be the next guy in the series who ends up breaking her heart.

He takes her on walks of Brooklyn and tries not to hold her hand.

\---

After a few weeks, Dan finds his patience with himself waning. Spending time with her makes him only want to spend more time with her. The playlists he puts together started leading more heavily towards sappy and romantic without him even realizing it.

And, he feels like Blair’s starting to notice. She’s been getting continuously more short with him. Bringing up things she knows he doesn’t want to talk about, and then picking at him like he’s a scab. It’s almost like she’s trying to push him into making her do or say something and he has no idea what that may be.

Dan reminds himself he’s not kissing her because he doesn’t want to hurt her. There’s no way in hell he’s going to fight back because that would be a much less enjoyable way of doing the same thing. He asks her to shut up, and tries to change the conversation to something safe. Something they can talk about that won’t leave the air charged with electricity.

Blair doesn’t like it, but she accepts it. 

She looks tired.

\---

It’s kind of creepy when it happens, timing wise, and Dan feels like he almost brought this all upon himself. 

While stirring his cereal, he had thought about Serena for the first time in awhile without being prompted to by some comment of Blair’s. He knows she’s out in the Hamptons, and Dan sits there over breakfast trying to figure out what he would have been doing there had they not broken up. Whether he’d be able to deal with all the pretentiousness of the Upper East Side without his own little hipster nook in Brooklyn to escape back to.

And then, a few hours later, Blair is on his sofa and telling him that Serena and Nate slept together again, and that she’s sorry.

It makes him feel a little sick. The idea that she’s already with someone else, and that he’s been dealing with a sense of guilt for weeks about just spending time with Blair.

She lets herself out and Dan wastes the next three days being selfish, thinking only about how this effects him and what he’s going to have to do to stop feeling like shit.

\---

He finally calls her in a moment of calm, asking if she wants to go to the Planetarium. He needs to get out of the loft and out of the borough and maybe just sit in the dark for a little while with a girl who right now is his best friend.

Dan knows that he wants to kiss Blair, and that Blair wants to kiss him, and he’s kind of depressed enough that he doesn’t even care about the her getting hurt part of it any more.

Blair sounds pleased to hear from him, and it makes him like her a little bit more, and himself a little bit less.

He takes the subway, and then comes above ground just to catch a cab. Normally, he would have told her to meet him there, but, he just can’t bring himself to do it. When she enters the backseat with him, she’s not the Blair who’s been hanging out with him. She’s the more typical version of herself, with the headband and the heels and it makes him nervous. Dan can’t stop moving his hands and he doesn’t want to open his mouth for fear of what he’ll say to her. The cab starts to smell like her perfume, and he has to get out of there.

Once the man is paid and the door’s open, Dan bolts, starting a pace he knows Blair won’t be able to keep up with. He can sense her behind him, and tries to figure out what he wants.

When the museum is in sight, he slows down to apologize and notices her forehead’s a little sweaty. It makes him feel better.

When they’re sitting in the dark, Dan lets himself put his hand down on her knee. The movement of his thumb, causes her legs to slide open just a tad, and it gives him a surge of confidence. Before he can second guess it, he lets his other hand pull her in for a kiss and she moans and lets him.

\---

Jenny’s the one who shows him the pictures, with a gentle nudge to his shoulder and a smirk on her face. 

Dan looks at Blair, how there’s a hint of a smile in every photo, and the way her fingers are tightly interlocked with his. He takes in his own expression and demeanor, displaying none of the happiness, and already feels like he might have harmed her.

\---

Their afternoons now more filled with undressing in bed than trips around the city. Dan tries to treat Blair like she’s delicate and special and with every gesture expressing that she deserves more than she’ll ever let herself say she wants.

She’s quiet most of the time, like she’s somewhere else, and Dan finds himself reciting lines from poems to fill in the silence. When he talks about copulating ecstatic, she sighs and pulls him a little closer, and Dan mentally thanks Ginsberg.

He can’t bear to look at her sometimes, because he feels like she’ll be able to notice he’s not going to be good enough. Dan keeps his eyes closed and kisses her and tries to achieve the impossible of being worthy.

\---

A few days before school starts he gets out of the shower to find Blair sitting on the floor of his bedroom surrounded with all of her things in bags. She says they have to talk and Dan wants to do anything but that.

Apparently, Blair doesn’t like the new version of herself. She’s scared and doesn’t have a bitchy armor to hide behind any more. Dan knows that Chuck is coming back to town. Knows that they’re all going to go back to school and sit in the same assemblies and that there’s no way Blair can face any of that with ponytails and t-shirts.

He hugs her, because he can’t force her to stay, but when she cries on his shoulder, he almost wants to try.

\---

Going back to St. Jude’s after the entire year he’s had is even worse than starting there when he was a freshman. Dan hadn’t really stopped to appreciate what Blair had saved him from earlier in the summer, weeks of boredom and loneliness, until she was gone. The rest of his high school career seems to strech out like that now, bleak and empty.

He wants to call Blair all the time, but especially when he listens to _Needle in the Hay_. According to the play count on Itunes, that’s been a lot recently. He can’t help but think of her, with no shoes on and her hair messy, while Richie tried to take his life in a bluelit bathroom. How she had remarked on how incredibly sad it all was.

The first time he sees her at school, in her blazer and tights, it’s almost like nothing has ever happened. Serena and Nate exit some towncar together and Blair’s pretending like he doesn’t even exist. 

Dan stands off to the side until he just can’t take it any more.

\---

Later that day, he sees Chuck leading Blair up a staircase to the third floor. Watching Blair trailing behind Chuck Bass makes his stomach hurt. He wants to yell something out, a stupid comment about learning from our mistakes, but can’t bring himself to do it.

He just looks on and worries about her more than he ever did when she was in Europe. Dan knows Chuck won’t be gentle, and will force Blair to make excuses. And Blair will do it because she wants everything in her life to fit some sort of idea she carries around in her head.

Blair would tell Dan she’s a big girl. That he’s got a case of the mean reds and has to stop giving his heart to wild things. She’d rest her head in his lap and remind him that sometimes he thinks too much. She’d get him to calm down and reassure him that she’ll be ok. That it’s only sometimes she gets a little self-destructive.

But, Blair’s not there to do any of those things, as he watches her climb those stairs.

He goes out to the courtyard and writes her a letter he has no intention of sending. Serena sees him, and gives him a little wave and smile. Her other hand is entwined with Nate’s, and Dan doesn’t even care. He returns the gesture before going back to his notebook. Writing down, _Sometimes I think my crush on Serena was Fate’s way of actually bringing me closer to you_ , before crossing it out.

He sighs, and thinks about all the things Blair could say to him. Whether one of those would be that he’s missed.


End file.
